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Group Claiming to Oppose ISIS Says It Committed Cyberattack on BBC

Ping! Zine EditorJan 2,January, 2016Comments Off on Group Claiming to Oppose ISIS Says It Committed Cyberattack on BBC

LONDON — A group of computer hackers who say they want to disrupt the online activities of the Islamic State have claimed that they were behind a recent cyberattack on the British Broadcasting Corporation. They said the attack was intended as a test of their capabilities, according to messages sent to a BBC reporter Saturday.

“It was only a test, we didn’t exactly plan to take it down for multiple hours,” the group, New World Hackers, said in a message to the BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, who posted the message on Twitter. “We realise sometimes what we do is not always the right choice, but without cyber hackers … who is there to fight off online terrorists?”

BBC digital services were shut for a few hours on Thursday in what it said was a “distributed denial of service” attack.

Such attacks typically disrupt sites by flooding servers with messages from multiple systems so they are overwhelmed.

A BBC spokeswoman said the broadcaster would not comment on the claim of responsibility.